It's Hot Strike ... September?

UAW is officially on strike and the CA Lege may have just made striking easier to survive.

Source: UAW

It’s official! As of 12 a.m. this morning United Auto Workers (UAW) are on strike!

For the first time in history, UAW workers are striking the three major American car manufacturers, Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis (Chrysler and Jeep), at the same time. It’s all part of a new strategy called the Stand Up Strike, in which the UAW will call on workers from targeted plants to “Stand Up” and go on strike. UAW President Shawn Fain explained the strategy in a live broadcast last night, explaining that the first three targets will be Stellantis’s Toledo Assembly Complex in Ohio, GM’s Wentzville Assembly Center in Missouri, and Ford’s Michigan Assembly Plant near Detroit.

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Auto manufacturers have been posting record profits and making piles of cash on stock buybacks for the last several years and workers at their plants have yet to benefit. As much as many people want to cry and say that the striking workers will put American manufacturers out of business or drive the price of cars up, there is little question that the company can afford to pay these workers what they are asking. Right now, labor accounts for only about 4 to 5 percent of the cost of a car, while 40 percent is advertising.

Just to be clear — prices have gone up for the American consumer, profits have gone up for the executives and shareholders, and the people who make the cars can’t even afford to buy them. That’s some bullshit.

What are the workers asking for? They are asking for an end to “tiers” — tiers of workers based who has been there long enough to have been grandfathered into better union contracts, meaning that workers are being paid wildly different amounts while doing the same work. They are asking for more paid days off, and increases to their pensions and benefits. They are asking for a 32 hour work week and a 40 percent increase in their salary, all of which the manufacturers can easily afford without increasing the cost to customers. (Yes, a 40 percent raise over the next four years is a lot! It’s also how much CEO pay has risen.)

As much as the 32 hour work week is about ensuring a work-life balance, it’s also becoming something that we are going to have to look at going forward to ensure that jobs are available to everyone.

The fact is, we are going to get to a point in many industries where we don’t need as many workers as we once did, but we will still need jobs that pay a living wage, lest our whole economy fall to pieces. Cutting down to a 32-hour work week in these industries will mean that these companies will have to hire more people and keep layoffs to a minimum. Americans largely do not want a European-style welfare state, so we will have to figure out some way to force private industry to adapt to our changing needs in the coming years. The auto industry is a good place to start the transition.

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Yesterday was not just a big day for striking auto workers — it was a real big day for striking WGA and SAG-AFTRA talent, as well as any other groups hoping to strike in California in the future.

Why? Because the California Senate passed a bill that will allow workers striking for more than two weeks to claim unemployment benefits. That’s huge. It means that workers will be able to survive much longer while on strike without worrying where their next meal is coming from. It means that executives will no longer be able to just wait out strikes until workers “lose their apartments and houses.” California Governor Gavin Newsom still has to sign it into law, of course, but hopefully we can all count on him doing that. It would be a very good day for Californian Wonkette readers to call his office!

Now, as if by magic (not magic), the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of the studios, announced yesterday that they are planning to meet with the WGA next week to resume negotiations after three weeks of nothing — hopefully because they intend on meeting their demands.

Should this happen, it’s sure gonna be awkward for scabby talk show hosts like Drew Barrymore and Bill Maher who jumped the gun and announced their intent to cross the picket line and bring their shows back within the last week. Barrymore anyway, as it seems highly unlikely that Bill Maher is capable of shame.

These workers aren’t just doing this for themselves, they’re doing it for all of us. The more unions succeed, the more strikes successfully push executives to come to the bargaining table, the better it is for all American workers — whether they are in a union or not. It’s time to make management scared again.